Latest News

7 March 2010

Westat India Releases Findings from the Skills Gap Survey

Speaking at the 1st Annual Convention of the Higher Education Forum (HEF) on 6 March 2010, Vasudha Narayanan, Vice President, Westat India Social Sciences, provided an overview of the findings from the Skills Gap Survey. As explained by Narayanan, this survey was designed to address the question of whether new MBA graduates of India's institutes and universities meet the expectations of their first employers. The project used a combination of a web-based survey and individual, semi-structured interviews to examine this and related questions amongst Human Resources and senior executives from 74 organisations in the BFSI sector.

The survey found that industry has the highest expectations for newly hired MBAs in the area of Attitudes, followed by Skills, and finally by Knowledge. The consensus view, as shared by one respondent, was clear: "We hire people for attitude and train them for the skills".

The Skills Gap Survey found the following areas were most important to industry:

• Industry expects new MBAs to come to the corporate world with the proper attitude.
• MBAs must be committed, dedicated, self-disciplined, self-motivated, and show an aptitude and willingness to learn.
• MBAs must possess strong analytic, listening, and communication skills, and they must be able to work in a team and collaborate.
• Finally, MBAs must come in with at least a basic knowledge of the organisation and processes within the organisation, and an understanding of products, solutions, and services - including those of competitors - as well as consumer behaviour.

For more information:

• Skills Gap Survey overview (page in PDF format)
• Skills Gap Survey full results (page in PDF format)
• Westat India: contactus@westat.in (email link)